For years, foresters and conservationists have been trying to create new markets for western juniper in Oregon. The species has overrun some parts of the state, and is sucking scarce water from Oregon’s high desert.

A handful of custom sawmills that are willing to work with the small knotty tree have experimented with juniper fence posts and juniper cabinets and juniper shavings for pet bedding.

Meanwhile, in a tiny town in Sweden not far from the Arctic Circle, master distiller Jon Hillgren wondered what gin would taste like if it were aged in a juniper barrel.

SWEET HOME, Ore. — The great forest just east of town beckoned to Dan Rice when he was a young man, as it had to his father and grandfather before him, both proud loggers in a time that now survives mostly in black-and-white photos and in the talk of old men. He and his brothers kept the family log-trucking business going, he said, hauling to mills now mostly automated, partly in obligation to the legacy…